"I don't judge players on their last-minute form over two or three games. I'm judging them over two years. Or, in particular, if anyone new on the scene has emerged I'm judging him over several months.

"I'm not going to make decisions in the last week or two of the season, which is a notoriously bad time to judge talent.

"As a (club) manager I was never keen on making strong judgements on players, either to buy them or to sell them or to retain them in the last two or three weeks of the season. I wanted to make my decision around the November-to-early-March time because that's where things are really done.

"You don't become a good player over two games or a bad player over two games."

A European side has never won a World Cup staged in North, Central or South America and Hodgson believes that home advantage may be important again but that European countries are becoming more adept at playing in different conditions.

He added: "Home advantage is a great advantage - look at France in 1998. Germany in 2006 achieved far more than people anticipated. They went into the tournament at a low ebb in terms of everyone's expectations - and came out doing very well.

"In 2002, the Japanese and the South Koreans went a lot further than most people would have given them credit for before the tournament and in '58 Sweden reached the final - and I don't have to tell you about England in 1966.

"That might be the simple answer to why the South Americans have done well in South America. Maybe it's climactic to some extent, but I think those advantages and disadvantages will even out more and more.

"I think European teams are getting stronger and more adept at playing in different conditions.

"South American teams are exporting all their players to Europe, so there's a certain European-ness about even the South American teams these days."